Microbes are relational, and they foster multispecies relationality. In both mundane and profound ways, they connect, interlace, and affect bodies, and are affected by them in turn. This comes to the fore in two recent ethnographic volumes that interrogate microbial worlds: The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life, by Jamie Lorimer, and With Microbes, edited by Charlotte Brives, Matthaus Rest, and Salla Sariola. Both books show how microbes bring species into relation with one another and suggest modes of ethnographic engagement with them. To situate microbes, these volumes demonstrate, is not only to query the situatedness of knowledge production with regard to microbes, but it is also to place microbes within a geopolitical landscape that renders global inequality a motivating (and causal) factor in cultivating certain microbial relations. Microbes’ continuous state of relational becoming requires “withnessing” to situate and disentangle the microbial relations flooding the Anthropocene.

中文翻译：

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定位微生物

微生物是相关的，它们促进了多物种的相关性。它们以世俗和深刻的方式连接、交织和影响身体，并反过来受到身体的影响。这一点在最近两本质疑微生物世界的人种学著作中脱颖而出：杰米·洛里默（Jamie Lorimer）所著的《益生菌星球：用生命来管理生命》和夏洛特·布里夫斯（Charlotte Brives）、马特乌斯·雷斯特（Matthaus Rest）和萨拉·萨里奥拉（Salla Sariola）编辑的《微生物》 。这两本书都展示了微生物如何使物种之间产生联系，并提出了与它们接触的人种学模式。这些卷表明，对微生物进行定位不仅是要询问有关微生物的知识生产的位置性，而且是将微生物置于地缘政治景观中，使全球不平等成为培养某些微生物关系的激励（和因果）因素。微生物的关系生成的持续状态需要“陪伴”来定位和理清充斥着人类世的微生物关系。